ROAR: “Moscow, Warsaw should heed positive signals”

The question is if Moscow and Warsaw understand each other properly, analysts say, commenting on the latest attack on Russia’s policies by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Earlier this week, Kaczynski, the chair of the Law and Justice (PiS) party and brother of the late Polish President Lech Kaczynski, urged the US and European countries to oppose “Moscow’s neo-imperialistic foreign policy.” Washington and the EU should support countries that want to get rid of Russia’s control, he stressed in a letter to the European parliamentarians.

Kaczynski said he “did not write to anyone,” Vremya Novostey daily said. But the article dubbed “Allies and values” was published on his party’s official website with the explanation that it had been sent to foreign politicians and public figures, the paper noted.

This article or letter “was by no means the continuation of Kaczynski’s video statement ‘to Russian friends’ that he read with a gentle look during his presidential campaign,” the daily said. Then, in early May, he was speaking “about compassion and sympathies from Russians after the Smolensk catastrophe and stressed the need for changes for the better in the relations between the two Slavic states,” the paper said.

“There is no hint to those feelings in the new article, but there is a call to the West to strengthen the union against Russia, allegedly restoring the area of its influence,” the daily said.

Some observers in Russia have seen not just personal feelings in Kaczynski’s statement. For him, it was “important to show that, despite certain changes of political and geopolitical trends, Poland is an independent state, and its voice should be particularly heard in Eastern Europe,” believes Evgenia Voyko of the Center for Political Conjuncture.

Poland is interested in increasing its importance within the European Union, she told Actualcomment.ru website. “Warsaw is trying to show that, despite the reconciling notes that were heard some months ago, after the election of Bronislaw Komorowski as president, Poland will be insisting on its own views.” Overall rhetoric will not change this situation, the analyst believes.

“This problem should be considered in a broader context of the two countries’ relations,” Voyko noted. "The question is if these positive signals sent by both Moscow and Warsaw are heeded and understood properly,” she said.

The current tension is partly caused by the continuing investigation of the crash of the Polish presidential airplane on April 10 near Smolensk. The Polish side is demanding more materials regarding the case.

According to the head of the Polish governmental commission on aircraft accidents investigation Edmund Klich, the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee has completed the investigation of all the details. “We expect that the report will be passed over to Poland already in October,” he told Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily.

Warsaw hopes to find in the report the materials on the operation of the airfield outside Smolensk and the flight conditions on the day of the air crash, Itar-Tass quoted Klich as saying.

Meanwhile, the name on the new Polish ambassador to Russia became known on Thursday. Polish ambassador to Romania Wojciech Zajonczkowski will represent Warsaw’s interests in Russia. The term of the present ambassador, Jerzy Bahr, has expired.

Warsaw has received a preliminary agreement for the new ambassador from the Russian authorities, Itar-Tass quoted Polish diplomatic sources as saying.

Zajonczkowski worked as the main advisor on Eastern policy for Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the agency said. He was appointed as ambassador to Romania in August 2008.

On Wednesday, President Dmitry Medvedev discussed over the telephone the bilateral cooperation with his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski, the Kremlin’s press service said.